


Dead Meat.

by anniesburg



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Budding Relationship, F/M, Haven (Dragon Age), One-Sided Attraction, Potential Romance, healer reader, plot-driving tarot cards, probable smut, scary inquisitor negl, varric being an all-around nice guy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 15:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14215818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anniesburg/pseuds/anniesburg
Summary: A small-town girl meets a well-traveled Qunari.





	Dead Meat.

**Author's Note:**

> i really don't know what this is but i have intentions to continue it?? idk. i just like bull tbh.

It would be rude of love not to kill with the same cruelty as a dragon. Its wingspan is twice as long, as one must understand. Its teeth are long and sharp. Love bites are the toe tags in a living morgue, identification marks from the mouth of someone who cares very deeply. Love only takes prisoners, and carves them up from the inside.

You have a very unspecific understanding of the meaning, execution and frailty of love. There are too many pictures of it in your mind, two people with their arms tied together. They are flat and painted, two shapes on the back of a tarot card. A woman on a throne with a heart-shaped shield, surrounded by nature.

_It’s just a card game_ , you tell the people who ask, shuffling your deck with precise fingers. There is uncertainty, coldness today. You know you’re lying. _Won’t you play?_

Strange people tread in and out of Haven, stormy-eyed men with big swords and fine mail. An elf who scoffs at tavern songs and grumbles to herself, bursting into giddy snorts of laughter when a good joke is told. A sad-looking woman turned bird-like who pecks at her food and never lowers her purple hood. You know their faces, are sure they have names but introductions seem so far-off.

Adan never let his name stray far from your mind. He grasped your hand and asked if you could heal. You nodded quickly. He knows bits and pieces, healing potions are as easy as breathing, but considers himself more like a freelance experimenter. He’s renegade, useful, or at least he’d like to believe he is.

You know the truth. You hum as you muddle elfroot and dawn lotus, the sun slipping under the crack in the door. Healers are the most useful, this is obvious to anyone. The strongest fall without doctors, why in the world do you think doctors suffer so deeply?

The strongest runs through camp like plague is on her heels. She stands tall, a powerhouse of willful pride and indifference. She has brown hair, close-cropped to her head and she wears sensible shoes. Her war hammer is strapped to her back, ready to be lifted and brought down on a skull.

She looks at you, this Herald of Andraste and you feel your skin catch fire. Other people feel it too, the storm-eyed man has a tendency to blush beneath his beard. The woman who wears sadness like a cloak clenches her fist tighter. You’ve taken to avoiding her line of sight, wandering the snow-covered grounds to keep out of the reach of her. You’re afraid to stare at her, afraid of a face full of her claws. You keep your cards next to your hip, they don’t buzz with magic but you can feel their friendship.

Your travels, if you can call them travels, have you bumping in to even more strangers. How she can coax so many people into existing next to each other is beyond you. Another elf who sounds like magic stands against the wind and the snow as if neither can touch him. He does not lean against his staff, you get the sneaking suspicion it would not fall if he were to let go of it.

There’s a dwarf, you’ve never seen a dwarf and your eyes are like saucers. He has a quiet smile and a summer-like gaze, you feel better knowing he finds the whole thing amusing. He holds his hand out to you, you shake it. He says he gets that a lot from humans, you tell him you don’t get out much. It makes you happy to hear him laugh.

You ask the man who struts like a lion how his ribs are, remembering when a new recruit slid a dagger between the kinks in his armour and drove it into his abdomen. He almost died and sat up unfazed and pale in the face not twenty minutes after surgery. He can’t quite meet your eyes when he responds, saying he’s fine and feeling healthy. His face is still pale, barely even red from the cold.

The sky is bunched like fabric against the green tear. This is where your short journey ends, carrying you barely anywhere but safe from a great danger. The wind cleaves murky bursts of snow from the ground, stings your face and neck. The gate of Haven looks like a hell-mouth. You sit instead on the short, cobblestone wall jutting from either side. There is plenty to see

Turn one way, watch the recruits train under the lion’s eyes. Turn the other and watch sweat pour from the forge-master’s forehead as he wills a sword into being. You wonder how much it would cost to have a cloak made, nothing protective but instead something warm.

There is, however, something to impede your vision before the forge. Where there was nothing, a tent is instead pitched. The morning sun cuts the dark on the hill until it’s a bolt of golden cloth and from the mysterious enclosure steps a mountain.

You are unable to place the shape of him, unable to force it into the chasm of your mind. You’ve heard of Qunari, but never thought they’d tower so tall. Even from your perch he casts an impressive shadow. He stretches and you can’t see a bone for the muscles.

His back is slightly to you, but you imagine he must be at eye-level. _How lucky_ , you think, _to look him in the eye_. You say nothing, however, content to watch him rest hands that could make rubble out of a stone tower on his hips.

“It’s rude to stare.” he says with his back still to you, making a noise like amusement when he hears you gasp. You drop your head and miss the sight of him turning. 

“I’m sorry.” you mumble, there’s another noise from him, something like a curiosity that has you lifting your gaze. His face is not what you expected, although you can’t recall exactly _what_ was to be expected in the first place. 

Scars rake across his face in painful lines, snaking across a an eye hidden away. You shiver involuntarily, that must have been agonizing. Most striking of all are the horns that you begin to process.

They’re nearly as wide as his shoulders, jutting out and pointing upwards like a bull’s. The look of him compliments the timbre of his voice, and he searches your face, illuminated by the morning sun to find evidence of your mockery.

Instead he sees something similar to awe as you look at him. He’s bare-chested and the cold looks to be unregistered by him. He walks over to you, your eyes at level with the one that he sees from. His ears are pointed, overshadowed by the bulk of his horns. You have a desire to reach out and touch the strangeness of them.

“I’ve never seen a Qunari before.” you say when the silence persists. He folds his arms in front of him, a gesture of aggression that is not matched by the look of similar curiosity on his face nor the casual lean of his posture. 

“Figured.” he replies, his mouth tugs up into something like a smile. “We arrived just last night.” you nod.

“I couldn’t help but notice. There is much to watch out here but you— I wasn’t expecting you.” he tilts his head, the massive horns dipping almost as if he does not understand. 

“Don’t tell me you stare at _that_ all day.” he gestures to the tear in the sky and you quickly shake your head. 

“Not _all_ day,” you defend, your voice sounding a bit worried. He seems to pick up on it just fine, but lets you finish. “I spend most of it inside Haven,” you jerk your head towards the doors. “with Adan, he’s the healer. Sort of.” 

“A healer sort-of? Sounds dangerous.” you half-shrug at the response. 

“No, well—” you give him something close to a smile of your own. “ _I’m_ more the healer, he’s been forced into the role. He works with potions so he’s practically the right man for the job.” you say. 

“Right,” he responds, sounding just a touch like the distraction you provide is wearing thin. Still, your expression barely moves. You’re amazed by him, he seems to be drinking that in. “so when I want a healer, I’ll just yell for you?” you nod and give him your name. 

“And if I want—” you pause and wait for him to fill in the blanks.

“A mercenary.” he says. You nod. “You call for The Iron Bull.” he finishes. “No guarantee I’ll come running, though.” that makes you smile again, and it appears that was his intention.

“Mercenary?” you ask, turning your head to see if you can find any more. He’s big as a brick house but he can’t be the only one. “Are there many of you?”

“We’re called the The Bull’s Chargers, there’s six more milling about. Some might already have gone inside.” he sees the way your eyes light up, gives you a curious look. You feel the need to explain.

“I— I really don’t get out very much. I’ve had to say that more than once already. How embarrassing.” the impressive man does not react, his arms stay folded. 

“Not one for battle? Adventure?” you shrug a bit.

“I know how to fight, I’m just not of much use to anyone dead. As for adventure—” you find his gaze suddenly very difficult to meet. “I’ve lived here my whole life.”

“Really?” the sound he makes is something close to a laugh and you lift your head to give him an indignant glare. There seems to be a spark of something interesting in your eyes, for his expression shifts just slightly from mockery to further intrigue. 

“It isn’t as if I can help it. Haven’s tiny, and for the most part it isn’t even on a map.” your sigh is bordering on dramatic. You pause, hoping, hoping, _yes_! He smiles at you, the Iron Bull and shows off a row of teeth. Warmth blooms in your chest, a sense of foreign pride. If your dull, village humour can make a mercenary laugh— perhaps there is a use for you. 

“That sounds awful.” he remarks. You get the sense that he’s humouring you, you don’t mind so much. His personality is nice, he’s so interesting to look at. 

“Where were you before here?” you find yourself asking out of the blue. He leans in just a touch, an experimental gesture you don’t shy away from. That seems to be the reaction he is hoping for.

“The Storm Coast, a bit of a wild place. The sky was gray as the sea for the whole time I was there.” you bite your lip.

“Did you see a dragon?” you ask. His eye lights up and you’re glad for it. 

“Yeah, it was fighting a _giant_.” gasping lightly, your smile is no mere exaggeration. He seems amused as he can be by the ferocity with which you enjoy his stories. The Iron Bull tells the whole, wondrous affair with the voice of someone who was there. He hasn’t the grace of a poet but you didn’t ask for that.

You interject where you can, piping up with anecdotes that are perhaps more exciting. He asks about the state of the breach and it’s everything in you not to wear your knowledge like a crown.

The most interesting thing he seems to find in you is your ability to be impressed by most of his situations. It’s a bit of trouble explaining the why of it. Of course you’ve never found Haven very much fun, but in retrospect Haven might say the same about you.

“If I could travel, I should like to see a dragon.” you say, almost casually. You fiddle with the bag of tarot cards at your hip. “I know something of monsters and demons, even before the— _that_ ,” you gesture to the breach. “but nothing tangible.”

“The less I know about demons, the better.” he says, taking you by surprise. 

“Well, I won’t be asking you if you’d like a closer look, then.” you say, your affectionate smile seems to turn his mind from his apparent distaste for demons. You can understand it. 

“Monsters I can handle, beasts of all kinds but demons—” you hesitate, barely holding a breath before your hand reaches out and touches his shoulder. It’s just a quick gesture, coupled with a look of intense understanding. 

“I don’t like them either, haven’t met anyone sane who does.” you think about the elf who falls asleep in ruins and shudder a bit. That’s the wrong kind of brave in your opinion. The Iron Bull seems to exemplify the right to some extent.  “It’s too bad, though. That might have been my one chance.”

“One chance at what?” he asks. 

“Being at least halfway as intriguing as you are.” your smirk seems to change the look in his eye to something more friendly. He inclines his head in the direction of your hand before you let it drop.

“You’re plenty intriguing.” he assures you, you feign a a look of contempt but it’s ultimately hollow. “Ask any of the Chargers, I make friends very easily.” you cock your head to the side. Your smile is slow to emerge but it is warm.

“Is that so?” he looks down at your hands, touching the exterior pocket on your shift. 

“What’s that?” the Iron Bull asks, looking down. You pull from the pouch a deck of worn but beautiful cards. They fit into your hand like they belong to a time-weathered friend. You hold one out to him and he plucks a card from the deck, turning it over. “You know how to read these things?” he asks. You nod. 

“My aunt passed her deck down to me. Old family heirloom.” the Iron Bull seems almost afraid to crush the fragile paper in his hand. He puts the card back swiftly. You shuffle the deck almost absent-mindedly. “All right, maybe _this_ is my last chance to be interesting.”

“I already told you, you are.” he reassures but you fail to believe him. 

“I could give you a reading some time.” he seems to bristle. “What? Scared they might say something truthful? It’s just a game.” he seems entertained by your teasing. “And they’re the closest thing I have to magic.”

That seems to stop him, a strange expression settles on his face. Like he’s trying to decode your meaning, he struggles to understand. It’s a very particular want of yours, one you can never seem to articulate.

You don’t even get the chance to try, however. There is the sound of creaking wood from behind you as the gates open. A woman emerges from beyond them, tall and taught and strong. You know her for the light encased in her palm and the weapon on her back.

Her voice is like the warmth of summer, full of joviality. The Iron Bull is immediately drawn away from you. She, like some charmer of all things alive pulls to her the stormy-eyed man, the sensible knight crowned by a dark braid. Finally, she turns to you and Bull. The look in her eye is familiar, not to you but to him. She gestures, asks if he’s up for some adventure. He leaves your side.

You move to stow your cards away and he seems to realize he took a step away without even offering some parting phrase. He turns, covers your cold hand with his.

“When I get back.” he says, his eye gleams but you doubt it’s for excitement of his return. You nod, your smile is no less dim. He leaves you and you feel like you’re lesser for his departure. In a few moments, when the party has set out you’ll go back indoors to a crank Adan.

For now, you watch the retreating form of three human beings and one who towers over them like a giant, high above the world. _This is fondness, surely_ , you say to yourself. The Iron Bull seems kind and exciting.

Your feet carry you inside, far from him and back to somewhere warm where you can blitz herbs into healing salves. Unbeknownst to you there is a change in your posture, in the way you carry yourself. You’re fast, undetected but different perhaps.

Love is a kind of death, you suppose. The lovers are juxtaposed by the devil. Your thoughts turn to Bull more times throughout the day than you care to count. A kind of death or not, it isn’t as if you’re running away from the dying.


End file.
